Footstops in the Dust
by poetic licence
Summary: MWPP era. Four boys take a walk to their room together and the future catches up with them. For Kristi, for Christmas.


Disclaimer: Borrowed people. Original Ideas.  
  
  
  
  
  
Footsteps in the Dust  
  
- for Kristi -  
  
Quiet laughing could be heard as four figures crept quietly through the darkened corridor. The first, a tall, slim figure with night-velvet hair; the second, a slight, haunted body with mischievous brown eyes; the third, a plump, ungainly build with a nervous smile; the fourth, a gangly, four- armed spider-like stature with a liking for the outrageous.  
  
It was another of their night time trips together, down to the kitchens to forage up some food, up to their 'room'; an abandon classroom off the wing leading from the South Tower. This was as far away from the Astronomy Tower as you could possibly get, far enough away to be safe from prowling teachers and the fur-ball that was known to everyone as Mrs Norris, the caretaker's mangy cat.  
  
The four of them, blood brothers, thick as thieves, partners in crime, all for one and one for all; their faces all set with concentration and light feet against the stones. The Marauders were out tonight.  
  
The first, he liked to be the flirt, the rib-tickler, sharp of wit with the patience of a flea, forever jumping out of one project and into another -- his latest being a sweeter-than-honey Ravenclaw with thick rainwater hair by the name of Grace Kilcher. The second, the quiet steady, methodical worker, with a taste for illicit night walks and clever pranks, the company he kept delighted in his ideas, the map he helped construct a balanced sheet in his hands, his careful ears pricked up. The third, the welcomed tag-along, the bottom man. If they were a gang of thieves, then he would be driving the get-away car, the middle man, who was more often than not, used as the bumbling fool that people would take snarl at and then take pity on, the exact effect he was after all along. The fourth, ringleader, soft- hearted ladies man, wicked sense of humour with a flirting tongue, talking himself and his friends out of every possibly situation, with designs on a fiery Tiger Lily.  
  
They didn't talk, as they slipped through the shadows together, four years of careful training had provided them well. A creak of a door startled them: their backs pressed to the wall, the third slipping into easy animal form and scuttling ahead, nose adrift and twitching.  
  
Minutes passed, and the rat was back, morphing easily back into human form with a swish of tail and human hands. He caught their eyes and mouthed "The wind."  
  
They proceeded on, slipping into their sound-proofed room with practiced grace, each beginning to breathe normally again, their laughter escaping like waves.  
  
"Hey, Remus! Another moon gone, how does it feel?"  
  
"Jamie, how's the excellent Lily-of-the-Valley?"  
  
"Pete, congrats on the test score! Who's the man? Who's the man?"  
  
"Siri, what's this I hear about Snape trying to make a move on your girl?"  
  
The conversation blundered around like an errant tumbleweed, the four sixth formers letting loose their blatant energies after the separation of Christmas break.  
  
Sirius Black shook his long hair back and smiled his heart-throb grin, tossing himself elegantly into a low, and decidably squishy armchair. Remus Lupin folded his legs up underneath him, perched on a desk, and flung out a mischievous smile, one filled with the pleasure that the splendid map that was in his possession once more, a useful tool in rule-breaking. Peter Pettigrew lay back on the soft, slightly threadbare rug and plucked at the fine threads on the edge, his chubby, clumsy fingers surprisingly nimble at this. James Potter folded his arms and his legs and lent on the edge of the desk, his slight build one of power and lean muscle, looking every bit a man in love.  
  
This place was their place: a deserted classroom that they half-heartedly cleaned from time to time -- the neat and ever-precise Remus often having to insist on it as summer grew closer and the dust mixed with his sensitive nose. This was their haven, their escape from the rules and regulations - whenever it wasn't that 'time of the month' for Remus. Whenever James wasn't on a tryst with Lily in the Astronomy Tower. Whenever Sirius wasn't off snogging with whatever hapless victim of his choice. Whenever Peter didn't have a massive amount of homework to catch up on, where they would gather around to help him out.  
  
James -- the Prefect - was particularly suspicious that both Professor Dumbledore knew of their haven, as did Professor McGonagall. He could never be quite sure as to why the Headmaster and their Head-of-House chose to overlook their discrepancy, especially his, on this. Until, of course, he came upon the realisation that at least it was a safe place away from too- curious eyes (Snape). It was also safe for rather radical conversations that were too risky for the common room or behind the library stacks (lycanthropy, gossip, and on the occasion, the cross-breading between flowers and stags). And at least here, there was absolutely no chance of people almost being killed (Snape again).  
  
In the room itself there was a slightly-listing-to-the-right couch, several battered tables and chairs, a recently unblocked chimney and an expandable trunk, that was large enough to fit them all in if Filch or Mrs. Norris came 'a-calling', trying to catch students 'out of bed'. They, for instance, might have been slightly startled to see many crosshatches of footprints around on the floor, and wondered why there were none in a certain space in the room. Had they designed to investigate further, they would have found a largish chest with an illusion of nothingness: and inside, four boys, four young men, four men with legs and arms: and then only three, then two, after the third scampered away...  
  
Then...  
  
And then...  
  
Footsteps.  
  
A black-haired figure wrapped in his father's cloak of nothingness comes in. He is alone, a slight persona that is fleeting in its quietness and ever-increasing night.  
  
He looks around, seeing the imprints of the past cover the floor in a slow- dance of memory. He finds a folded page of old History of Magic homework on the table, aged, but quite like the homework, he himself, had tucked into the crook of his elbow.  
  
He felt heavy: weighed down by his sixteen year old fatigue and the expectations of...justice, a lonely world through the past of wrong-doings and empty mistakes. He was tired by the rest of his father's ghostly stage, shot out at fear itself somewhere in his future.  
  
A broken past. A broken present. A broken future.  
  
"Harry! Come on!"  
  
He turned to leave.  
  
The footsteps faltered.  
  
  
  
- finished -  
  
© Amy Crosby 12-01-2003 


End file.
